Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 9

This is Part 9 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3  Part 4   Part 5   Part 6  Part 7  Part 8

--------------------

March 21 Monday. 

Vernal Equinox. First day of spring. Visit ancestral grave day (Buddhist observance).

Rumblings again in the middle of the night. Morie says she looks at the light at the ceiling, says it’s not moving. She says it’s our back muscles. What does that mean? That there is some low level spasms in our backs that makes it feel as if we’re lying on gelatin quivering?

No. There are definite jolts. Like cats ready to tear away from their slumber, that’s us. Once a body is relaxed a bit, as it is after bathing in a steamer, one knows what happens when there is a tremor. Muscles and organs clench like a fist. Tight. That is for most the way we are these 10 days since the quake. Clenched fists, physically. Power to the people.

Body is clenched, mind is clenched. Focussed on what we need to do to survive today, whether that means standing in lines at markets or whatever. How to get nutrients. In my case I’m a vegetarian and know how to survive without meat fish eggs, etc. We have some vitamins too.

A yoga teacher in Australia: MOVE OUT OF THE KANTO/TOHOKU AREAS ASAP.

This same teacher is directing people receiving her email (it was forwarded to me) here to do this or that to protect ourselves against radiation. The teacher is telling people to do a cleanse involving various kinds of vitamins and supplements. Vitamin C is one. The teacher directs people here to “Get powdered vitamin C - order it.” Another item on the cleansing list is Glutathione. Another is Chlorella. Is that yoga teacher even aware of how hard it is to get even regular food here, that people have to stand in line some hours just to buy a bag of rice? Does that teacher think that even in regular times things like glutathione and chlorella are readily available in shops? Does that person imagine that Northeast Japan is like Australia or America where there are health food stores all over, shelves lined with all sorts of supplements? It’s not.

Postal service is limited. So far, starting several days after the big quake  we receive two letters classified as important. Three postcards. We can’t just “order it.”

Another person is telling me to take algin, which is some sort of seaweed extract. We can’t just go to a store and buy algin. Too bad. Most stores are closed, and even open will most shop keepers know what we are talking about? Never heard of it?

We have plenty of konbu (kelp). That is readily available.

It will help if the helpfully intended advice people send is sensitive to what is available here. That will really help. The problem is that many don’t know what is available here, even in non disaster situations. Cultural differences. They speak according to what is available in their own country. Which is all they can do, maybe.

The yoga teacher is a yoga teacher. A specialist in radiation as well?  When people in a disaster area hear the words “MOVE OUT OF THE KANTO/TOHOKU AREAS ASAP” are our minds eased? Do we feel frustration hearing that, to save ourselves, we must get these things that are impossible to get?

Misuzu, a former student, writes telling me that she and her one-year old baby girl are with her parents in Akita since early March. They live where the Tamakawa hot springs are. She invites us to escape to there, to her parents’ home. Oh! Misuzu’s big beautiful heart! These words soothe me. Though I don’t think we’ll need to go, it is possible now that we can go. There is some bus service to northern areas starting today. It is something feasible. It is soothing, knowing we can do that. Thank you, Misuzu.

Relaxing, soothing. Frustrating, causing our minds to clench.

Yesterday telephoning a shop we usually go to for vegetables, the shopkeeper tells us that they are technically closed but come on anyway. Bicycle over there. Apples (an apple a day), mushrooms (various kinds), potatoes (2 kinds), even some frozen pork slices, for Morie. Good of that shopkeeper to let me come. A bagful of groceries. Many items usually available they still don’t have. Necessities are what I buy, but one can of beer for Morie. Beer keeps her sweet!

News has it that yesterday two people along the coast are finally saved after 9 days on a rooftop. 

Genius Takahashi (a colleague whose office is next to mine for 23 years) says potassium iodide is available over the counter and that a medical company is providing pills free of charge where needed.

I read (in the Wikipedia article on potassium iodide) that people over forty might not benefit from its protection. Too bad for us!

Part 10 coming soon.  

--------------

for my life too
help arrives...
spring blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

 

Guest Post: Ed Markowski - Blue Collar Baseball

Forbes Field, circa 1900-1910, courtesy the Library of Congress

Back about a month or so ago, Ed Markowski sent me the following email that I asked his permission to reprint as a blog post.  He kindly granted the same, and so it was decided that this lovely piece of baseball-iana should appear on opening day, 2011.  Here it is in all its glory.

Hope you enjoy it.


---------------------


Don

Loved the Pirates of the late 50 ' s to the late 70 ' s
from Harvey Haddix & Smokey Burgess to Roberto
Willie & Manny Sanguillen to Doc Ellis Dave Cash
& Kent Tekulve hands down my favorite National
League team & had they played Detroit in the WS
would have had a hard time rooting for the Tigers.
______________________________________

When I think of it can ' t help but wonder about the
blue collar connection between Detroit Pittsburgh Chicago ,
my grandfather & father ' s union activities & my loyalty
to the Tigers , Pirates , White Sox & Cubs . Oh , i liked
the Giants of Marichal , Mc Covey , & Mays well e nuff ,
but never as much as the lunch bucket teams .
______________________________________

& Don , go figure , on June 12th , 1970 , the only game ,
complete game , shut out , and no hitter ever thrown by
a pitcher tripping on acid while thrown in California ,
was thrown by Pittsburgh ' Dock Ellis . At that time ,
my heroes had already changed from Kaline , Clemente ,
Matty Alou , Ernie Banks , Ron Santo , and Bob Gibson ,
to Rennie Davis , Grace Slick , E Cleaver , Tom Hayden ,
The Dead , and The Doors .
_____________________________________

So you know Don , when Dock tossed all them zeros
in some crazy way the lesson I learned was that it 's
entirely possible & wise to keep one foot in both worlds ,
I realized that it was perfectly ok to have Bob Gibson
& Bob Dylan as heroes ..... Our minds are vast and endless ,
& there ' s room enough at the inn for everybody .
_____________________________________

Well ok , when Cor , Pizzarelli , & I were doing the
radio interview with Jimmy Roselli at Chautauqua I
recited .............


FACTORY WINDOWS
THROUGH A FILM OF GREASE & SOOT
OUTFIELD GRASS


and told Jimmy , " alot of the auto plants had baseball
diamonds on the plant property & they sponsored teams.
Well , I was working on the assembly line and I knew
my childhood dream was over when I looked out that
window on my lunch break & realized that the side of
the window I was on was the side of the window I
would stay on for the rest of my life .

After we did the readings , we went to this bar down
the road & off Chautauqua ' s property .

I sat next to Cor and asked ......

" Why didn ' t you send factory windows for the baseball
anthology ?

I said ......
" Because I wrote the piece two nights back in room 16
the Super Eight in Mentor , Ohio while I was eating a
ballpark frank & sipping a coke that my wife and I got
at a seven - eleven "


Cor said ......
" Factory Windows would ' ve been the best in the book . "

I said ........
" Cor , I wrote baseball for ten years , you know , it ' s
an old rabbit I can still yank out of the hat every now ,
then , and there in room 16 . "


Ed

zero zero after nine the blonde in seat 7 ignoring us both

Dog days     a white butterfly       knuckleballs  its  way  to  nowhere

---------------------------




playing their games
on the sly...
pale blue butterflies

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Wednesday Haiku, Week 10: Tom Montag

Wednesday Haiku, Week #9



 

Five crows -

there's always a reason

to quarrel.

Tom Montag

don't teach your tricks
to the fawn!
cawing crows

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Maruyama Okyo

PS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 8

This is Part 8 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3  Part 4   Part 5   Part 6  Part 7

--------------------

March 19.  Saturday night

 

Children. Two days after the quake our neighbors grandchildren are at their house and in the street knocking around a volley ball. It’s an unusually warm day for mid March. Always they greet us with smiles and happy eyes. Now too, though something is different. Elementary school girls they are. We do the “were you okay” in the earthquake which is part of standard greeting now. They are always casually polite; they respond affably if I ask them something.

Outwardly it might seem they are unfazed by the quake and daily tremors.  What goes on within who can say. There is a visceral reaction in all of us. They are afraid. Here they are playing with their ball as usual. 

The other day Morie and I are at a little grocer’s in a tiny plaza. Three little kids, lower grade elementary school, hang around playing a hand held digital game. In this disaster schools are all closed. Soon it will be spring vacation. One approaches me, bows politely, “konnichiwa.”

This doesn’t always happen. These are strange times. Morie asks where he lives. His house is broken, he tells us.

He’s no doubt being cared for, living somewhere, with relatives or friends, or at an evacuation shelter nearby. He is afraid too. It is a fear through which they reach out to others, trust others. A fear which makes us more human, brings us back to earth. Earthquake.

Is this what Christians mean by “fear of god”? Conceptual surfaces get shaken up, broken apart. What’s under? Quaker.

Other children, upper grades elementary school boys, I see riding around on bicycles with friends. As if spring vacation has begun already. In their eyes, in their aura, there is a difference. They are afraid. I’m afraid too.

Mitsuru, Morie tells me, will go back to work in Fukushima. Earlier today my entry has it that his job is not within the danger zone. It turns out it is within 20 kilometers of the nuke. He tells his manager that he will return once he finds gasoline. Gas is hard to find now. Sometimes it’s good to be out of things. Walk the earth back, Mitsuru.

People are connecting about where to get what. Such and such a place has veggies and meat. Ntshadi picked up soy milk downtown somewhere. Fresh fruit is available. Morie’s classmate from way back in elementary school calls. What do we need? He has gas canisters, he says. What else do we need? Morie tells him mushrooms.

Takayuki Nakamura, a former student from an English circle at the medical school here, is a surgeon now at a cancer center in Gunma Prefecture. He finally gets through to us this morning. He is a warm intelligent kid when he is with us in our group. We meet his family on our way to Izu Penisula, years back when our kids are little. He sounds relieved to find us alive and well. It does my heart good when a former student calls us at a time like this.

Part 9 coming soon ... 

----------------------- 

a cuckoo sings
the little boat goes
swish, swish!

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

 

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 7

This is Part 7 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6

--------------------
 

we can flee earthquakes

tsunami nuclear disasters, or

try, but from governments

and public officials there is

nowhere to hide.

Scott Watson

March 19 Saturday Morning

Morie and I are supposed to go to Tokyo today. We are supposed 

to hook up with Big Daddy Warren and Kuniko-san, and with 

former student, Super Student, Keiko Taguchi, but that is planned 

before the quake. We have to cancel.

Friends in countries outside Japan urge us to leave. They tell me 

the nuke news in Japan is different from what is being said in the 

Western media.  We know that, we are aware of that. I appreciate 

their concern and we know it is because they care about us. We 

know they are not trying to make us more afraid than we already 

are.

I donʼt believe the Japanese news. I donʼt believe the Western 

news. I believe nothing. Where the bee sucks, there suck I. 

Where the Hummingbird goes to Die.

The swans that migrate each winter from Siberia to lakes and 

ponds in this region are still here. When the water moves they fly 

up. When it calms they settle in the water again. The park that 

surrounds Gourd Pond up the hill is filled with things broken in 

the quake. A mountain of rubbish. Itʼs now a designated disposal 

area. The old folks who play geta-ball there, a kind of croquet, 

will be without a ground for quite a while it seems. 

Birds yet sing.

The Western media. Is this the same media that had everyone 

believing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? The American 

government. Is it the same government that sends young men 

and women off to kill or be killed in stupid stupid wars? Iʼm 

channeling Gandhi now. I should accept their “protection”?

Or should I tell them what Ginsberg tells them to do with their 

atom bomb? I wouldnʼt want to appear confrontational.

Governments are pulling citizens out. At the same time they are 

sending relief workers.

The sirens day and night the ambulances and other emergency 

vehicles speeding along a nearby highway. They carry victims

from the hard hit tsunami areas to hospitals here in the city. 

From places like Kessenuma, a really horrific scene if we 

watch the news, but Kessenuma is where Morieʼs aunt is from 

and she is okay and her house undamaged. The news, naturally, 

maybe, shows the devastation but does not show what is 

relatively untouched. Is that because that is what they think 

viewers want to see?

If there is no destruction to watch, will people tune in, or 

change the channel? Soon, no doubt, media attention will be 

focused elsewhere. Which is natural. Life goes on.

Aunt Tetsuko. Hurray! hurray! I want to give her a big hug.

Morieʼs niece and her family, her husband Mitsuru and her 

daughter Nanami, left Fukushima after the quake and went 

to her parentʼs home in the north of this prefecture. The niece 

lives in Soma, Fukushima. Not far from the nuke. Mitsuru 

works for Tohoku Electric Power. The other day he receives 

a call from his supervisor asking him to return to work. “Asking,” 

in Japan, is a polite way of ordering. Over the phone Morie 

advises him to lie.  Say you donʼt have enough gas. If he 

doesnʼt comply it means he quits. He doesnʼt work at the nuke, 

though, which is run by Tokyo Electric Power.

If itʼs me I am not returning until itʼs safe. If itʼs me I lie. I have

a cold and fever. Iʼm suffering temporary amnesia. Post 

Traumatic Stress Disorder. I forget how to drive.

People want their power back. We are happy our electric is 

back. A power company must have workers.

Technically his workplace is outside the 30 kilometer danger 

zone.

Water is back and itʼs back for good (speaking optimistically). 

Cleaning out our snow water tub. Then fill it with water works 

water. Which is healthier? The snow water tub has gravel, 

pieces of winter grass, soil, leaves, that got scooped up with 

the snow.

A hole in the wall natural bread place is back baking bread. 

My self assigned task today is to get bread. Iʼll wear a 

surgical mask on the way.

----------------------------

how to ladle Mama's
lucky tea...
a lesson

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

The Glass Bead Game: Issa's Sunday Service, #96

Today's featured song is only the second instrumental so far in this ongoing literature meets rock and roll project - the first actually did have a few words, but was largely instrumental.  Today's selection is courtesy of The Thievery Corporation.

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, the inspiration for today's selection, is one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors.  Largely overlooked by fans and readers in general, it is certainly one of the finest novels of the 20th century, well deserving of the Nobel Prize that it garnered for its author.  It reprises all the great themes of Hesse's career, from duality through transcendence.  There are bits of all of his great books here, if in slightly disguised forms: Siddharta, Demian, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, and Journey to the East, as well as many of his early student novels.

Narrated by a fictional biographer, with introductory and supplementary material, the larger part of the book passes for a partial biography of Joseph Knecht, a great Masters of the Bead Game or Magister Ludi.   Set in the 25th century, it relates the story of the intellectual province of Castalia, where the students all learn the glass bead game, a sort of interdisciplinary exercise of connections among all the great fields (literature, music, science etc.).

The folly of such an exercise, removed as it is from "the real world," slowly and steadily becomes apparent, no matter how attractive the concept.  And attractive it is; witness the proliferation of exercises online attempting to recreate its chief philosophical premise (& that's just a handful).

Some have gone so far as to suggest that the internet itself is the glass bead game manifest.  We won't go down that road but we will take some time to chill to the groove of The Thievery Corporation, a dance-acid jazz-trip hop band, that knows the ins and outs of the outs and ins.  I just learned of them last week and I'm already listening to third of four albums I could rustle up from the library and, well, they make me relax and smile.

So there you go.   The cut may have nothing more to do with The Glass Bead Game than a shared title, but if it made me mellow, well there will be no argument from me.

Sticking with the theme of the unusual, here is a composition performed by Jacques Burtin performed on the kora, entitled "La Lumiere Matin (Morning Light)," a piece the composer describes as a prelude to The Glass Bead Game.








-------------------------------------


This week's featured poems come from Lilliput Review, #102.   It is a triad of pieces that all appeared together on a single page, the stitch just tight enough to pull us through ...

Our hearts are empty for the Beloved,
and streetlamps are endless in the night.

W. T. Ranney

Dangerous kisses
pull us closer to heaven
Nowhere left to go

Kate Isaacson

The Goddess's Sweethearts

All those guys
holding hands with Kali are
already rotting away

Tom Riley

even the heavenly gods
crowd 'round...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 96 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 6

This is Part 6 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5


--------------------

March 18 Friday. 

One week after big first quake. Out to shovel snow that fell, but 

not to clear walkways: to fill our tub. Crisp blue skied after snowʼs

morning. Itʼs 15 before 7. Walk down to the highway to check out 

the gasoline station. There is a sign propped outside that says no 

more gas. Service area is chained off. Even so eight cars are lined 

up. A few drivers standing out of their cars smoke. I ask one if the 

station will open today. He says he doesnʼt know. He doesnʼt 

know but still he is lined up waiting, I ask. Thatʼs right.

On the way back meet an elderly neighbor walking his Akita dog. 

The dog is up in years too. We talk a while about how we canʼt 

flush our toilets.  Such an inconvenience. When will gas service 

resume. When will we have water. Some American friends, I tell 

him, strongly urge me and my family to flee Japanʼs nuclear 

disaster. But how would you get out of Sendai, he asks. Thatʼs 

exactly what I tell them. They donʼt understand that we canʼt

go anywhere even if we want to.

I tell him we can pray for kamikaze, divine wind. We laugh and 

part. He tells his dog to say goodbye to me. Old dog looks at me. 

Heʼs not much longer for this world, that dog. Maybe the fellow 

too. Maybe me too.

Last night after sending off my journal we get a call from Morieʼs 

cousin.  Her relatives in Kessenuma along the coast are alive and 

well. Miraculous, we think, hearing of and seeing images of the 

destruction there. That means that all Morieʼs family are
accounted for; alive and well.

Jeremy in Seoul sends me information about a kelp extract called 

algin. It helps with radiation exposure. We know of kelp (konbu, 

in Japanese) and that it helps rid a body of heavy metals. 

Japanese  use a lot of kelp in their traditional diet. We have kelp 

here at home.  I tell Morie we should eat plenty of kelp.

Mid morning Morie bicycles to the hospital where she had a 

lumpectomy in January. 10 minutes by bicycle. She needs 

medication.  Iʼm at home answering emails.

After lunch she bicycles off again to a radiation therapy clinic.
There the doctor explains to her the situation at the clinic. The
sonic machine they were using for her therapy is broken and
must be repaired. The doctor wants to continue her treatments
with cyber knife radiation therapy.  Otherwise, if she really
wants sonic radiation therapy sheʼll have to go to the university
hospital, which means many more patients and a much longer
wait.

While she goes to the clinic I ride my 50 cc scooter to our
acupuncturistʼs clinic to pick up some Chinese herbal potion
for her. This is to keep her energy level up. Itʼs made of fer-
mented garlic, Korean ginseng, the gall stone of an ox, and
one or two of the B vitamins. Good stuff. I try it from time to
time. It makes me feel like Tarzan. Beating my chest with both
fists.

Not many vehicles on roads this afternoon. People walking,
people cycling.  People standing in line at food markets. Itʼs
an empty feeling, the traffic halved or quartered. Itʼs a hard
times feeling, but itʼs a relaxed feeling too, without the hustle
and bustle, without people buzzing off here there busy busy
busy.

Itʼs been a week since weʼve had a bath. Or a shower.

2007 is a sabbatical year for me. Ten days in September
2007 Morie and I travel to India to spend a week at an
Ayurvedic clinic. Each morning begins with yoga at 5. 3
hours of yoga. Then breakfast. Then Ayurvedic oil massage.
After the oil massage we get in a steam box. Here it is called
a sauna box but technically it is not a sauna. Itʼs a steam box.
Still oiled up we sweat in that box. It helps our body absorb
the medicinal oil. Then we wash off with water and chick pea
powder. That removes most of the oil from our skinʼs outer
layers so we donʼt go around sticky all day attracting insects.

There they tell me that we can do this at home. That home
versions of the steam box are being sold on the internet. The
oil we can buy. Or we can make our own oil, but in Japan it
may be impossible to find the special medicinal herbs. I make
oil, once Iʼm back, with turmeric, ginger, neem leaves,
cinnamon bark, cumin, and other spices we can easily get at a

store. I buy a steamer. Itʼs not made of wood like the one at
the ashram.  Inside it has something like a kidʼs swimming
pool liner.  Outside is something like hot pad material, between
the too is a very firm cardboard like material. It comes with a
little chair and a boiler with a hose that channels steam into the
box.  

Today seems like a good time to heat up the steamer. After-
wards wash off in our bath room with heated water made of
snow.

Itʼs a good feeling. So good. It stays with me. I sit in my recliner
that I got for 20 bucks at a second hand store in December. An
afternoon nap.

The biggest news today is that we get water. It makes me want to
do a water dance. Dance to the water music. Water for you,
water for you. Water for us all. Our snow water tub is halfway
down. We open the faucet and let water run. We flush our toilets
for the first time in a week. It feels good to flush.

Fifteen minutes later the water is off again. Water dance will have
to wait.  We donʼt know why. We speculate that there is a
problem with a pipe somewhere in our neighborhood. Maybe
not. Because then they could just turn off the water to that
particular home. We donʼt know. We live not knowing. Like it
or not. A life beyond liking or disliking.

We know the water is here though. Somewhere. Itʼs back. Itʼs
near. I can sense it.

This evening Big Daddy Warren forwards me a notice from the
U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. They are sending buses to pick up
American citizens and their dependents at Sendai City Hall.
Taking people to Tokyo. Today and tomorrow. 600 seats.
What people will do in Tokyo it doesnʼt say. One source
says expatriates are spending thousands of dollars for seats
on flights out of Japan.

For some reason Iʼm not moved to bussing away. Is it
because I feel rooted here? Is it a bit panicky, this flee the
nuke scene (other than the immediate surroundings)? Is it
because I feel rooted here? Is it because the impassioned
meditation of making poems has calmed my mind to a state

that even an atom bomb will not disturb? I donʼt think so,
this last one.

Would I feel worse on a flight, more like a prisoner? The
notice Warren forwards me from the embassy is from an
entity with a title Tokyo Warden.

Who knows. Ride ʻem cowboy.

--------------------------

flowing water spells
the character "heart"...
plum blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Wayne Hogan: Master Artist, Lilliput Review Division

I can't speak for the world of big publishers, but as a small (well, ok, micro) press publisher in the business for over 20 years, I get amazing things in the mail with a fair amount of regularity.  The book pictured above may, however, take the cake for all-time surprises.

The incomparable Wayne Hogan, artist and poet extraordinaire, put together a book of his own artwork that has graced the covers and interiors of Lilliput Review for a good part of those 20 years.

And it is amazing.  I am not going to waste your time trying to describe what he has done - I'm going to show you (for maximum enjoyability, click each image to enlarge):

What we have here is 32 pages jam-packed with the kind of joy only Wayne Hogan can communicate with the tip of pen and a whole bundle of talent.  His work, while often levitating, nonetheless has kept this mag grounded for all these years and I am eternally grateful for that. I asked Wayne if this was a limited run and he said no, but at the moment there are a handful of copies available. Here's the details:

The chap sells for $11.56, which includes postage, and I'm nothing if not prompt in sending things out when I get a request---within no more than 2 days, barring drastically unforeseen circumstances.

So there you have it - fantastic art at a very reasonable rate.  Mail payment to "Wayne Hogan", little books press, PO Box 842, Cookeville, TN  38503.

One final note on the chap; it comes complete with a bevy of blurbs, which were quite a delightful surprise to me.  Here's the back cover:

click to enlarge

The quotes are all genuine, coming from various issues his work has appeared in.  Perhaps, I need to reel in my effusiveness.

It could become ubiquitous.

Then again, perhaps not.


---------------------------


This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #145.  This morning, I'm particularly struck by this poem as I've been preparing for a poetry discussion session next month on Walt Whitman: Father Walt.  One of the poems I'm considering covering is "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," a poem that captures him during one of his infrequent downside moments.    The tone of this week's poem, "Ebb and Flow" by Robbie Gamble, is distantly related to Whitman's and called it to mind immediately.

There is something about the pensiveness, the taking stock, we humans seem to do on returning to the ocean, that is captured in these works, as well as E. E. Cummings "maggie and millie and mollie and may."  I will follow Robbie's poem with one of my favorite modern haiku that I use when doing introductory classes, a poem by Peggy Heinrich.

Ebb and Flow

my beloved strides the water's edge
trailing her pain in a wake


I sit on the lip of the boardwalk
walking up with the turning tide,
trying to imagine what she passes through


each of us
is pulling toward something new
as water pushes on the skin of the earth


how miraculous, to both be warmed
by the same sun-soft air

Robbie Gamble

Peggy's poem is so brief and so simple that it contains the world entire:







ebb tide
turning to look back
at my footprints

Peggy Heinrich

And, finally, we continue to think very often of our friends in that land of the sea, Japan.  Here is Issa, touching a deep, deep chord:

mother I never knew,
every time I see the ocean,
every time.

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear all 95 at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 5

This is Part  of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3  

Part 4

March 17 Thursday

Grey, cold, light snow. Is where we are in danger, or is it not? To 

be or not to be at risk. We always are, just the run of our everyday 

lives covers our eyes.

Lots of birds coming. Early spring feeding. Cat wants to be out-

doors. Will cat be irradiated? Some say we shouldnʼt go outside, 

and if we do wear a mask. We are more than 100 kilometers 

away from the nukes of Fukushima. Supposedly we are outside 

the danger zone. Japanese government says 30 kilometers. The 

U.S. State Department urges Americans within 80 kilometers to 

leave the area. Governments, governments: Iʼm tired of govern-

ments. Do governments really give a hoot? Why allow these things 

to be built in the first place?  

Because itʼs a

world that keeps making

shit and making shit till

thereʼs no more shit to make

or no one left to buy it.

Nukes = Commodities = Stock markets = Money

Cool off cool off.

Excuse my biliousness, my irritability, this venting of my spleen.

Morie is operated on January 6th for breast cancer. They get it 

all is what the doctor says. Now she needs 25 sessions of radiation 

therapy. The earthquake disrupts all that. Electricity is back at the 

clinic she goes to but still there is no water. Radiation therapy 

needs water too just like the nukes.

Napoleonic nukes they meet their no Waterloo.

I tell her we need to laugh. Jeremy in Seoul says this too. It keeps 

our immune system strong he says. I tell Morie she can go outside 

and bare her breast, whatʼs left of it, to radiation from 

Fukushimaʼs nukes. We laugh and laugh.

Thatʼs why she has to go out on her bicycle today, to get 

medicine.  There are lots of people outside she says. Standing in 

lines for water.  Standing in lines to buy food. Earlier light snow 

turns into what looks like a blizzard.  Bring it on bring it on. Water 

for our toilet. Godʼs frozen piss, says my cousin Sandy. Piss on 

the nukes too, please.

Water has come as far as the nearby elementary school, Morie 

reports once she is home. That means, hopefully, weʼll have 

water soon.

She says the gas works building has suffered damage from the 

quake. A main gas pipe is broken too. It will be a month at least 

before that is repaired. We can live without gas. Live without this, 

live without that. Live without life = ghosts? Moo ha ha!

T.V. news is showing Japanʼs Self Defense Force helicopters 

dropping water over the nukes. They are four drops but the 

broadcast repeats the drop footage over and over so it looks like 

there are fifty. Does it make me feel better watching so many 

drops? Drop vibrations spread over the land. Drop, drop, drop!

A student tells me later the news says todayʼs watering does not 

work. Try and try again.

Yohko reports that radiation level in Tokyo today is 30 times 

what it normally is. Things are getting Nuk-e-delic.

Nukes in Japan. Earthquake land. They are safe, they are 

necessary, the people are told. Experts are telling the people. 

Government officials are telling the people. Electric power 

companies are telling the people. Eventually the people come 

around. The people repeat what they are told.

Poets tell people nothing. People donʼt repeat poems. They 

sing them in the here and now, which is when, exactly.

Nukes. Government sponsored stupidity. Commerce 

sponsored stupidity. Science sponsored stupidity. A triumvirate 

stupidity. Triumviral sickness. Itʼs a stupid world in many ways. 

Nukes are just one kind.

Who can complain?

Big Daddy Warren, in Chibaʼs Nishifunabashi, near Tokyo, 

in his grand old age says he doesnʼt mind radiation.

Recalling my Uncle Joe (Leon is his real name). A judge for 

the state of Pennsylvaniaʼs environmental court. When Three 

Mile Island went down he has to go investigate. A few years 

later he is dead. Cancer. It is Three Mile Island my cousin 

Marilyn alway says. Three Mile Island killed him.

Another cousinʼs home in Eastern Pennsylvania two years ago 

is invaded by two crazies. Theyʼll get 40 years in prison. Nuke 

masters likely are crazy too, our time might be shortened thanks

to them. Weʼre all crazy. Thereʼs harmless crazy and harmful 

crazy.

The people will understand. They will have it all explained to 

them. They will be patient. What else is there to be? People 

get this crammed downed their throats. Itʼs as if there is nothing 

in this life but to understand and perish.

Cool down the nukes, cool down the nukes. The worldʼs 

countries will look into the nukes. They will look and look and 

build and build. Because why? Because that is what they do. 

Care for people in their respective countries. = advise citizens 

to evacuate. They need humans still. To work the machines 

that are supposed to release us from work.

Snow, and a southeasterly blowing wind blowing radiation 

out to sea so they say.

Our niece we hear nothing of or from. Even her parents north 

of us we have no contact with. Trying and trying. Several times 

a day. Telephone, cell phone, email.

Last night as earthquake matters settle a bit people begin 

reconnecting.  Our phone rings and rings until ten at night. 

Morieʼs  friends from college days. Morieʼs cousin Tokuro. 

Morieʼs cousin  Hiroko. Are you okay? Yes weʼre okay; 

are you okay?

Not okay is her aunt who lives in Kessenuma, on the Sanriku 

Coast. No one knows. No one hears. Itʼs possible they are at 

an evacuation site. We keep hoping to hear.

So far today there are not many tremors. That is a blessing in 

itself. That there is a today. All sorts of sirens can still be heard 

not far from hear. Heading east it seems. When will there be 

quiet?

Listening to the little birds outside. Tree sparrows. Listening to 

my flow.

Late this afternoon at last we connect with our niece. She and 

her family are safely back home north of here.

Part 6 coming soon

--------------------

living in harmony
how many generations?
sparrows in the eaves

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Wednesday Haiku, Week 9: Tom Blessing

Photo by bgblogging

Wednesday Haiku, Week #9

captured
in the jar of pickled eggs
the moon

Tom Blessing

sitting on her eggs
the chicken admires
the peony

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

Photo by Bill Barber

best,
Don

PS I mentioned to Tom his ku reminded me of Basho's about the octopus traps - so here it is.

Octopus traps - 
summer’s moonspun dreams, 
soon ended.

Bashō

PPS  Get 2 free issues    Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal, Part 4

This is Part 4 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

-----------------

Quake Journal, Part 4

March 16 Wednesday

It snows during the night. Wake up and shovel snow into an empty
trash can. Shovel it off our carʼs roof even. Off the our deck out
back. Off the deckʼs railings. Put it into our bath. Weʼll use it. Donʼt
waste godʼs water.  Rice and adzuki beans for breakfast. Tea made
of black sesame, black bean, pearl barley, and barley.

Wash face brush teeth. Change clothes. Doing what I usually do,
getting back into regular life, regular mind. Check my emails. Do
what Iʼm doing now: writing.

Raining again. Buckets set out to catch water. When will water
service come? Today our service is rain rain rain. Gas, word has it,
will take at least a month. We canʼt heat bath water without gas.
Without bath this isnʼt Japan. Where are we then? Bathless Japan:
unthinkable. There are public bathing places open, so says our son
by emails. There is a two hour wait to bathe. How are those places
heating their water? Weʼd need gasoline to get there.

All sorts of birds are at that apple in the tree. Oneʼs never been
here before. Welcome, birdy, welcome. Chubby fella. Hope kitty
doesnʼt get you.

Regular programs are back on T.V. That means what? Return to
whatever?

Cornbread is my self assigned task. Gas oven canʼt be used. Try
the little toaster oven. It comes out fine.

Morie and I want to walk around and see what shopping can be
done. Wait till rain stops, which it does after lunch. We are
fascinated to see around the corner a line of cars stretching way
up the hill from our neighborhood.  All waiting to pump gas down
at a  station on the highway. Morie says we should get in line. Not
me, baby. Iʼm a walkinʼ man. Though I may be walking to death
if my Korean friend is right that radiation might come to Miyagi.
Walking is the only way we could try to escape. Wind blows
faster than we can walk.

Are we supposed to stay inside? We find a little grocer inside a
tiny plaza.  No one is lined up there. No junk food is for sale. They
have fruit that looks like an orange but isnʼt. They have fresh
vegetables: spinach, lettuce, bell peppers, and ones I forget the
English name for. The sell beans too: adzuki and soy.

Why are there no lines here? Why are there lines at places like
Seiyu, which is owned by Walmart? Mysteries, mysteries.

We feel lucky to know of this shop. We feel lucky too that we
havenʼt had to spend half our days lined up for things. On the way
here we meet a neighbor on her way home from a big super-
market.  She says she waited 3 hours to get her little bag of items.
Mostly instant food products.

Back home our home phone rings. First time since the quake.
Itʼs startling!  What should be done? Answer it? Will it explode?
Itʼs Ishida, a colleague from my university. Kindly asking for us.
Heʼs okay too. Lives alone downtown. A sweet, offbeat sort of
guy. Teaches himself to play medieval European instruments.

Good news, the best news of this day, is that my students, the
ones who live by the sea, are all okay. Miraculous!

Still quaking, midnight awakenings. Like living on clouds of
rolling thunder.  Ready to hit the road at any time. Itʼs wearing,
wearying. Want a breather.  How nice it would be to float on
clouds of glory.

Part 5 coming soon.


--------------------

blossoming mountain--
the little food shop
lost in mist

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review

Scott Watson: Sendai Quake Journal: Part 3

This is Part 3 of Scott Watson's ongoing Sendai Quake Journal.

Part 1
Part 2

-----------------

Quake Journal 3

A friend gives him a ride back to his apartment.

Jim is going back downtown to the Westin where heʼll hook up
with some friends. A Starbucks water pipe breaks in the quake;
water is all over. He might go help clean up. We drop Jim at the
Westin and head home. Most traffic signals are not working so
driving needs extra care and consideration. Letting people edge
into traffic. Letting pedestrians cross a street.

Home, I get the barbecue grill out of the shed. Clean it up a
bit. Put the legs on it. There is some old charcoal. Can it be
used? Find some odd bits of wood around our tiny patch of a yard.
Fire it up using old newspaper. First we cook some Japanese rice.
Then put on some vegetable soup with two curry leaves sent us by
our friend Usha in Sydney. She sent them with her husband
Srinivas when he visited here late in February. Edge in a pot to
saute vegetables as well.

Next comes water for tea. Lastly water for bathing. Bathing means
wiping our bodies with a wet towel. Morie longs for a long hot
bath. Wants to wash her hair. Me too. I tell her Japanese women
of old washed their only once a week. She doesnʼt hear me it seems.

We eat early and go to bed early, just like humans of yesteryear.
Roughing it. With the ever present rumbling, it is as if we are
riding an old time train. Ever present danger of death and our
own response to it. Ride and ride. Rumbling along through the
night. Jarred now and then.

March 14th Monday.

It is trash day today. Will there be trash collection, or wonʼt
there be trash collection. We have a community organization
here.  The head of that might know. Go knock on his door.
From inside a locked door comes his voice. Who is it? Itʼs
Watson. Who is it?  Itʼs Watson your neighbor. Third block,
13-16. Watson. Oh. While he is unlocking his door Iʼm
wondering if heʼs fearing harm. Will there be trash collection
today? No information has come to him he tells me. Probably
not, he says, because there is no electricity. But some parts
of Sendai have electricity already. Oh is that so. If we donʼt
set out our trash what should we do with it?  Maybe your
back yard or in a shed. Okay.

Usually there are all sorts of memos passed around our neighbor-
hood. Do we want to participate in a tug of war or volley ball
game at an upcoming sports festival. Will we attend the annual
barbecue party. Now in a crucial situation there is a huge
information vacuum. No memos circulate, not even hand written.
There seems to be no line of information passing from city
office to ward office to community organization. No one knows
diddly squat. This is a disaster area. Lines of communication
are broken.

We hear things from neighbors who hear it from whoever, but
they donʼt hear it from anyone in authority. We hear from a
neighbor that anything broken in the earthquake can be brought
to a nearby park and left for future pick up. If there is a
future, and nobody, even the neighbor, knows that for sure.

As this day goes on it warms into a mild spring day. Most of
our cleanup is done. Morie wanders to a park nearby where other
neighbors are gathered to chat. The well side chat. It boosts
their spirits some. One of the neighbors has propane gas. He
can cook. He has a gas canister he does not need. He gives it
to us. We give him three oranges.

Iʼm readying the barbecue for another feast. We are eating
more these barbeque days than we usually do. Soup again. Sweet
potatoes. Fried tofu. Grilled chicken for Morie. Saute dark
leaf veggies again.

This morning I put tea in cold water and set it out in the sun
all day. Sun tea. Have it now.

A neighbor comments from her second floor veranda that a
disaster time is not really the time for our dining extrava-
gance. In her mind barbecuing outdoors is a luxury pastime.
For us now it is survival. We have no other way to cook. The
food in the fridge is going to go bad and Morie has no taste
for raw chicken. So cook we do. Barbecue. Cook on! Power to
the barbecuers!

Tonight at 7:30 p.m. all of a sudden lights go on. Hurrah!
We donʼt have to freeze tonight. We can cook on a portable
electric range. First thing is contact my parents in Florida
and our son in Texas. We use Skype because telephones are
still out. They are relieved to hear from us, to hear our
voices.

There are 77 emails from people all over, some from people
I have not seen or heard from for years. What a boost to my
spirits! And Audrey, a friend from high school days, offers
to fly my wife and me back to America. I jokingly tell her
that flying these days is a far worse experience than earth-
quake disaster.

But how kind of her to offer. People are offering to send us
money, send us food, anything. My cousin Nancy wants to send
us water. Itʼs overwhelming, the generosity. Audrey wants to
set up a relief fund for me. Jokingly I tell her to tell people
to buy my poetry books, the recent one DREAMING 
ZHUANGZI (link here).  What a relief it would be if one
sells. No end to happiness.

Seriously though I tell her to send money to a fund for the
tsunami victims, who are far worse off than people around me
here.

Here is no picnic though, no outdoor barbecue. There is still
no water. Other wards in this city have water already. Where
our son Jimmy lives there is water. We can go to his place for
water, but we must be careful about driving. Gasoline is scarce.

Tuesday

March 15th Tuesday.

Cold and cloudy. Breakfast of hot rice and left over vegetable
soup. One small individually wrapped chunk of cheese.
Camembert.  Arrange by email to meet Jimmy downtown at
9 p.m. He will leave the evacuation station at the Westin and
stay at his apartment tonight. Weʼll pick him up there and take
him back to his place, fill our water tanks and buckets.

A woman from Croatia who used to live in Sendai asks me to check
on an old friend of hers. She lives across the highway in Iwakiri.
By bicycle it is about fifteen minutes. Starting out it begins to
rain. The old friend can wait. Iwakiri is still there. It was not
hit by tsunami. Return home and set out buckets to collect rain.
We use this water to pour into our toilet after we pee or poo.
Water for the piss and shit.

Whether to feed our bird friends. In winter they come twice a day
at least for the chunks of apple we put out for them. Especially
there is a medium sized grey couple that comes. I stick apple on
a twig. Now food is scarce. Should we keep our apples for
ourselves?  I set out half the usual portion.

What will happen when cat food runs out? Morie has no fish for
herself. No fish for kitty. What will happen when our food runs
out? Kanae-san, a painter friend who lives across town, told me of
standing in line for 2 hours at a supermarket and all she could buy
is a bag of potato chips. Itʼs almost funny in a sick way. In a sick
and starving way.

News comes of the explosion at a nuke in Fukushima, a prefecture
just south of here. A niece and her family live there. Little girl
13 years old. Nanami. Technically they live outside the danger
radius. Have they evacuated? We hear they survived the quake
and tsunami.

Will the radiation blow to Sendai? Will we be in the danger zone?
Will we need to escape? What if what if what if. Thoughts as sirens
in my head.

Itʼs 8:30 p.m. Time to leave on the water brigade. Few cars on the
roads. Traffic signals working again. Pain in the ass. Much better
when signals were down. We have a trash can we wipe out. We line
it with a plastic trash bag. A regular bucket we line with a plastic
bag. The plastics bags weʼll tie shut so water does not spill out
during the drive home. We have a cardboard box lined with a
plastic trash bag. We have a five gallon tank for drinking water.
Whatʼs not in the drinking water tank we put into our big Japanese
bathtub.  Thatʼs for washing our bodies and for our toilet.

The rattling, the rumbling, goes on and on.

Part 4 coming soon.


--------------------

my parents
hugged it this way, once...
hot water bottle

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS  Get 2 free issues     Get 2 more free issues     Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature.  Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 95 songs
Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

Subscribe to Lilliput Review